‘We Want Peace,’ Pakistan Insists

As Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf insisted that his country doesn’t want war, Pakistani and Indian troops fired on each other again Friday in the disputed Kashmir region, and India ordered 20,000 more border residents to evacuate.

“We will never initiate war,” Musharraf told guests at a belated Christmas dinner at the presidential palace Friday night. “We want peace.”

He later told reporters, “I’m determined to talk to the prime minister,” referring to India’s Atal Behari Vajpayee. The Indian leader has rejected invitations to speak with Pakistani officials after a Dec. 13 raid on the Indian Parliament that left 14 people dead, including the five gunmen.

India has accused Pakistan-based Kashmir militant groups of carrying out the daylight suicide raid and demanded that Musharraf put them out of business.

When asked Friday if Pakistan has a responsibility to crack down on extremist groups, Musharraf said: “We understand our responsibility. We know what we have to do.”

Musharraf has taken several steps, including freezing the assets of the accused groups and others and arresting Maulana Masood Azhar, the leader of Jaish-e-Mohammed, one of the organizations blamed for the attack.

India has made it clear, however, that it believes more needs to be done and has instituted numerous sanctions during the last several days--sometimes drawing reciprocation from Pakistan. India has said it will halt train and bus travel between the countries beginning Jan. 1, and it banned Pakistan International Airlines from its airspace.

Papers in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, run photographs almost daily of sobbing Pakistanis saying goodbye to relatives as they board a train to India, not sure when they’ll see them again.

Shelling across the so-called Line of Control that divides Kashmir between the two countries has become an almost nightly occurrence, with a handful of deaths reported with grim regularity the next morning.

On Thursday, first India and then Pakistan ordered half of the other nation’s embassy staff out of the country.

The United States, meanwhile, is trying desperately to keep the peace, in part so Pakistan can focus on its western border with Afghanistan. Thousands of Pakistani troops are trying to seal the rugged boundary with Afghanistan to keep Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda fighters from fleeing into Pakistan and to capture those already holed up with friendly tribes.

Referring to reports Friday that Pakistani military officials had warned that they may need to pull back the troops patrolling the Afghan border to deal with a possible conflict with India, Musharraf said: “Whatever we were doing on the Afghan border continues. We’re not thinning out [troops].”

Pakistan, which until Sept. 11 had relatively poor relations with the United States in recent years, has become a key ally in the war in Afghanistan because of proximity and resources, including air bases and intelligence on Al Qaeda and Afghanistan’s ousted Taliban regime. The new relationship appears to have irked India, Pakistan’s archrival for more than half a century.

On Friday, President Bush praised Musharraf for “responding forcefully” in trying to shut down anti-India terror groups. “I hope India takes note of that,” Bush said at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Meanwhile, people continued to leave their homes on both sides of the India-Pakistan border.

Sumitra Devi, who lost her home on the Indian side during a 1971 war between the two countries, was packed and ready to go when the call came to evacuate the village of Mangoo Chak, she told Associated Press.

She took her sons and grandsons to the village of Koota, farther from the front lines in India’s Jammu and Kashmir state, and sought refuge at a schoolhouse.

“The war,” she said, “is about to break out.”